Robyn Hitchcock

Don't feel too out of touch if you're a rock fan who has never heard of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians or Alex Chilton. Both acts are quintessential cult-rock, college-radio items. But if your listening tastes sometimes tilt toward the adventurous, you might want to consider giving this all-acoustic double bill a tumble. Hitchcock already has provided one of this year's most memorable pop moments hereabouts.

A barbecue joint in the heart of Austin's party district may not seem like the best place for a composer and his ensemble to debut a serious new work. But Oregon's the Decemberists, the collaborative that realizes Colin Meloy's conceptions, are a rock band too. So just after midnight Thursday, the group took the stage at Stubb's and presented "The Hazards of Love," its new "folk opera," for the first time in concert. The show celebrated the release of the "Hazards" album (out now on iTunes, due Tuesday on CD and vinyl)

There are any number of pop-rock singers with greater natural talent than Robyn Hitchcock, although his thin, chesty-nasal voice is sufficient to get the job done, particularly with helpful harmony support from bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor, his confederates in Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians. There also are better rock songwriters than Hitchcock, but not many, at least not lately.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK is now three decades into a career -- first with the neo-psychedelic Soft Boys, then with the Egyptians and now as a solo artist -- that matches chiming guitars to a surreal and distinctly English love of wordplay. Songs such as "My Wife and My Dead Wife" and "Globe of Frogs" fall somewhere between charming British folk tales and '30s horror movies. His latest CDs, though, chart a course different from his work of the last decade or two.

Robyn Hitchcock, whose offbeat music has made him a critics' darling and cult favorite, is good-natured about his lack of mainstream success. "I basically play for intellectuals, hippies, dissidents and perverts," the English singer-songwriter says. Should his self-deprecating wit permit it, though, he can now add one more category to that group: Oscar-winning film directors.

*** Robyn Hitchcock, "Jewels for Sophia," Warner Bros. Hitchcock is a wise-guy surrealist. His obsessions with the Beatles, sex, death and pop culture haven't always come together into a satisfying musical whole, but "Jewels for Sophia" is his richest, most polished volume yet. He sings here of dark princesses, cheese alarm clocks and Gene Hackman in a voice that is crisp and reedy, fittingly Lennon-esque. Strange, whimsical and memorable.

* * * ROBYN HITCHCOCK AND THE EGYPTIANS. "Globe of Frogs." A&M. In the tradition of inspired pop eccentrics, British musician Hitchcock writes songs that read as aural snapshots of a strange and exotic landscape that exists nowhere but in his own head. Combining a dazzling command of the English language with an innovative synthesis of disparate musical motifs, Hitchcock is a gifted original who has a good shot at rising above his present cult status.

Robyn Hitchcock knitted his heavy eyebrows, peered out at the 1,000 or so people at the chilly John Anson Ford Theatre, and explained: "If you want to dance, it's better to just vibrate internally, because this isn't dance music." But the tall, lean Englishman's outdoor concert Friday showed that his melodic, intelligent pop and often bizarre, twisted imagery call for as much a physical response as a cerebral one.

Film director Jonathan Demme--who's directed Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" concert film, Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" video and a half-hour performance film of Neil Young--is now training his cameras on another pop music figure. On Tuesday and Wednesday he'll shoot several concerts by English eccentric Robyn Hitchcock, with plans for a 90-minute feature to be released next fall, accompanied by a soundtrack album.

Robyn Hitchcock is following in the footsteps of Syd Barrett, right down to having a y in his name where an i should be. Like the legendary founder of Pink Floyd, Hitchcock likes the sparks that fly when demented subject matter is put in pure pop form. With his former group, the Soft Boys, and on his own he's made some records that pull it off.

*** Robyn Hitchcock, "Jewels for Sophia," Warner Bros. Hitchcock is a wise-guy surrealist. His obsessions with the Beatles, sex, death and pop culture haven't always come together into a satisfying musical whole, but "Jewels for Sophia" is his richest, most polished volume yet. He sings here of dark princesses, cheese alarm clocks and Gene Hackman in a voice that is crisp and reedy, fittingly Lennon-esque. Strange, whimsical and memorable.

Robyn Hitchcock, whose offbeat music has made him a critics' darling and cult favorite, is good-natured about his lack of mainstream success. "I basically play for intellectuals, hippies, dissidents and perverts," the English singer-songwriter says. Should his self-deprecating wit permit it, though, he can now add one more category to that group: Oscar-winning film directors.

Film director Jonathan Demme--who's directed Talking Heads' "Stop Making Sense" concert film, Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" video and a half-hour performance film of Neil Young--is now training his cameras on another pop music figure. On Tuesday and Wednesday he'll shoot several concerts by English eccentric Robyn Hitchcock, with plans for a 90-minute feature to be released next fall, accompanied by a soundtrack album.

There are any number of pop-rock singers with greater natural talent than Robyn Hitchcock, although his thin, chesty-nasal voice is sufficient to get the job done, particularly with helpful harmony support from bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor, his confederates in Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians. There also are better rock songwriters than Hitchcock, but not many, at least not lately.

If Robyn Hitchcock were inclined to take up the craft of his late countryman and namesake Alfred, he would film whodunits that never quite get around to saying who dunnit. The English rocker is fond of posing puzzles and challenges to interpretation in oblique, non-linear songs full of symbols and odd transformations of being into new shapes, or being into nothingness.

Don't feel too out of touch if you're a rock fan who has never heard of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians or Alex Chilton. Both acts are quintessential cult-rock, college-radio items. But if your listening tastes sometimes tilt toward the adventurous, you might want to consider giving this all-acoustic double bill a tumble. Hitchcock already has provided one of this year's most memorable pop moments hereabouts.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK is now three decades into a career -- first with the neo-psychedelic Soft Boys, then with the Egyptians and now as a solo artist -- that matches chiming guitars to a surreal and distinctly English love of wordplay. Songs such as "My Wife and My Dead Wife" and "Globe of Frogs" fall somewhere between charming British folk tales and '30s horror movies. His latest CDs, though, chart a course different from his work of the last decade or two.

If Robyn Hitchcock, who appeared Friday night at the Palace, were a presidential candidate, he'd be Jerry Brown. Odd and occasionally too metaphysical to fathom, both men are pursuing goals they probably know they'll never attain (in Hitchcock's case, the top of the pop charts) with a single-mindedness others in their field might envy. As if to draw the comparison sharper into focus, Hitchcock even gave out an 800 number during one song in the show.

If Robyn Hitchcock, who appeared Friday night at the Palace, were a presidential candidate, he'd be Jerry Brown. Odd and occasionally too metaphysical to fathom, both men are pursuing goals they probably know they'll never attain (in Hitchcock's case, the top of the pop charts) with a single-mindedness others in their field might envy. As if to draw the comparison sharper into focus, Hitchcock even gave out an 800 number during one song in the show.

After 15 albums that have been inhabited by midnight fish, maternal insects and a host of other strange critters, British rocker Robyn Hitchcock says he's setting the lot free. Hitchcock's 16th and latest release, "Perspex Island," ignores the charming and often frightening images of surreal creatures he has used to illuminate real themes. And, having revived many of his quirky old crowd-pleasers during solo acoustic performances, Hitchcock says he is now ready to bury many of those old numbers.